After having ticked off the survival of this year’s autumn exhaustion successfully (I needed an additional round of workout, though, it must be the age) I am somewhat lost for words … Oh, I know: I must have used them all up to write my uni homework, describing in too many words why person A needn’t pay the purchase price. Lucky bastard: most of us have to.

Not an easy task, studying at home: while I love being independent, I fear I spend too much time searching for information that should simply be available in bulk … On the other hand, when have you last attended a uni seminar wearing a roller in your hair? Exactly.

I must wonder whether I do this on purpose, just to relive the good olden times, when thinking about Kant made me ignore both friends and traffic signs: after having paid my bills and stuff, I turn around to see if anybody’s waiting for me to finish my electronic papirology (nope, dear hackers, I do not bank online) and see a nice lady so I smile in her direction and she smiles back. I take my papers and my wallet and leave, only to remember I am also carrying a handbag today. So I turn and smile apologetically at the nice lady, who looks a bit shattered. “One of those Saturdays” I admit, grip my bag and walk home to finish my seminar paper on not needing to pay. Damn.

Oh, and all the big plans for tomorrow! Polish the parquet and the wardrobe fronts, finally try sewing with my wonderful new sewing machine, finish the seminar paper and get to read a bit.

Very warm here. Like: almost T-shirt and sandals warm. When the nice DHL girl told me this morning they have switched to the Christmas season regime I couldn’t help but exclaim. “Already!?!?” She told me they do that on 1. November and I realized we have November now. So that’s where all the flowers have gone.

Ahhh, and the November sun! Just imagine being able to say that: November sun! It makes all the garish orange, pink and salmon houses in our little town shine sort of beautifoolishly. Not bad at all, I really have to take care not to go down a notch or two in my taste …

I caught him doing something he was quite immersed into and asked him in a neutral voice whether he’d like to accompany me to a concert. It’s a French singer, he may not love her, but I’d like to go and I have no one. To my surprise, he said yes. As it turned out, it was also to his surprise.

A few weeks later I reminded him the concert I had tricked him into was that day. He was still quite baffled about having become a concert ticket holder so easily and kept asking me how I had done it 😳 (I could have sworn there was some admiration in his eyes, too). I said I was going to buy him a beer so that he can survive the concert.

She’s really, really damn good. Pure energy and loads of different stuff. Felt like heaven, though I didn’t understand her French at all 😳

When leaving the hall I braced myself for any complains, after all, it was my fault, but my hubby said, without being asked about it, mind you: “That was good! She’s good! She’s so authentic and full of energy!”

Phew. That really made my day. Plus, I am officially allowed to drag him into concerts by people we don’t really know or not at all. One can never tell, that was my Beloved’s verdict …

What I really did was react to ominous red scratches on our Prius’ silver-clad nonlying hip in a high-pitched voice that may or may not have sounded like a serious lack of enthusiasm.

“Oh, please/it’s just an old lady/she’s already feeling terrible/she didn’t mean it/of course we’re going to repair it/free of charge/as soon as possible/she didn’t mean it/we just don’t seem to have enough place/there are so many cars parking/I am so sorry/you won’t notice it’s been there …” Repeat.

That’s what you get if you shriek on a parking lot of a very busy local garage you intended to have your Obligatory Technical Inspection carried out by. At. On a Saturday.

“What’s that stink? Is there something wrong with our ersatz-Corolla?”

“I think this thing is called fuel. You need it to drive a car. Since we usually start driving electrically, especially when only just leaving, we never notice olfactorily our car uses gas, too.”

“Okay. Fuel. Gas. Olfactory. Remember the time we scared that poor grey-haired man in a parking garage because he couldn’t hear us driving behind him? I think he heard us only when I started to laugh so loudly…”

“Yeah, that was funny. He was cool. Laughing with us, as he did afterwards.”

“This is a very old Corolla, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Quite.”

“You know what?” The situation seems to be perfect for the old game of you-know-whatting the time away. Especially if you are sitting in a smelly old car you got as a replacement for the time your sweetheart is being serviced.

“What?” Well, here is a good sport at the wheel, isn’t here. There. He is.

Generally, we don’t think we need (= want to schlepp) a huge camera when birdwatching and if an exciting new bird pops up in front of our spotting scope, we simply attach our beloved Lumix to its eyepiece.

Obviously, such photos will not look very professional, but they’re good enough for us. And we needed them on Sunday to be able to check two birds we saw but couldn’t name straight away.